You Must Remember This: Colossal Cave Adventure

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I was just watching the documentary GET LAMP, a movie about text adventure games. As gripping as that sounds, I wondered if I could find the first text adventure game in the world online. In mere moments I was presented with the COLOSSAL CAVE ADVENTURE in glorious green-screen. Thank you, Internet!

You have two versions available to you, the Windows version [ZIP download] and the OS X version. Why should you care? Text adventure games, namely this one, defined an entire genre and era for millions of gamers. Games like Zork and Planetfall redefined story-telling and paved the way for all the graphical games to come.

Compared to modern games, text adventures are pitiful. However, when you consider the limitations of the machines at the time and the amazing work done by authors like Douglas Adams on some of the Infocom titles, I’d take a good dose of Starcross over Super Smash Brothers any day.